run with me

run with me

parenting

Today, I’m going to share with you my number one, most true parenting truth you’ve ever heard. It will change your life. Listen. Last night, my son asked me to wake him up early, even though school started an hour later and he could sleep in. I reminded him of […]

I lay drowsy in the dark room, a dim light from the hall and a low hum of activity cluttered the space just outside my awareness. Beside me a new little critter stirred in her clear acrylic bassinet. Before she could stir, she was in my arms, rooting and grunting […]

When I moved a million miles from my mom and dad, I was 24 and had never been away from them for more than a few months at a time. When my new husband and I arrived at our fancy motel after a day of driving through cornfields, I knew I […]

Before a woman has children, her wisdom is clear and distinct. Her ideals are commandments chiseled from on high. She knows she will tread the wire stretched taut across the expanse of her many towering responsbilities. Once those little creatures come along, that wisdom plunges, the commandments crack, the wire […]

Outside, snow falls in that Norman Rockwell way; quiet and tinged with vintage promises. The kids are wrapped up and reading or tromping snow in and out of the house. And this is the day you decide to clean the tile floor in the kitchen. This is the day you […]

Realizing you are one of ‘those people’ who has depression is a lonely place. It’s an overwhelming awful made even more appalling because I have children. If it were just me affected, it wouldn’t really matter. But I have children and for them to have a reactive shell of a […]

The invitation flickered through on Facebook when I was half through a six day stretch of single parenting. I was tempted to reject the spontaneous and kind offer of friendship out of hand. I’m busy, I reasoned. The list of To Dos won’t Do itself. I teetered on the brink […]

I’m not sure what he was talking about. He was preaching a sermon on Installation Sunday, when the new elders and deacons were sworn in, as it were. The pastor wanted to mark the occasion with a lesson in leadership. The kind of leadership that serves. But I was distracted. […]

He appeared on the edges of dawn, quiet and expectant. He is like the sunrise; he tips toward wakefulness until suddenly you realize he is awake and alive and thrumming, full bore like the morning sun, burning off the clouds of his sleep. “Mama, can we snuggle?” I moved over, […]

I read the theater listings wrong. We were too late for ParaNorman and far too early for The Avengers, which everyone in my family but me has seen. Frankly, I’m okay with this. My daughter, who seems to live and breathe Avengers these days, feels that this lowers the value of […]